Cyd Charisse, TCM Star of the Month for June, is considered by many to be the greatest female dancer of the movies’ Golden Age. She was last honored with our “Star of the Month” title in October 1998. For much of the 1950s, the supple and sensual Charisse dazzled in a series of MGM musicals in which she teamed with the top male dancers of the era, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Both men adored working with Charisse and praised her unreservedly; Astaire referred to her as “beautiful dynamite.”
Charisse was, indeed, a great beauty, somewhat in the style of fellow brunette and MGM player Ava Gardner. As an actress, Charisse could seem remote and somewhat detached, saving most of her vivid expressiveness for the dance floor. Born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, Texas, on March 8, 1922, she began dancing lessons as a child to strengthen her body after suffering from polio. “I was this tiny, frail little girl,” she would later recall. “I needed to build up muscle.”
Her childhood nickname "Sid" came from a brother who was attempting to call her "Sis." While still a teen, she performed with the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo under the stage names Felia Siderova and Maria Istomina. During a European tour in 1939, she married fellow dancer Nico Charisse in Paris. They had a son, Nico “Nicky” Charisse (1942-2019).
Cyd Charisse made her film debut in an uncredited bit as a flamenco dancer in the Continental Pictures production Escort Girl (1941) before signing with MGM in 1943, where she began working as a chorus dancer. For her professional name in movies, MGM producer Arthur Freed changed the spelling of her nickname to "Cyd" and used the last name of her husband, whom she would divorce in 1947.
Through an MGM contract, Charisse had a nine-year apprenticeship at the studio as a dancer, supporting actress and occasional leading lady. She supported Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls (1946) and swimming star Esther Williams in both Fiesta (1947) and On an Island with You (1948). In The Unfinished Dance (1947) Charisse had a more significant role as a self-centered ballerina undeservedly worshipped by one of her young students (Margaret O’Brien, in the star part). The Kissing Bandit (1948), a musical starring Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson, featured Charisse, Ricardo Montalban and Ann Miller in a “Fiesta” dance number that many thought the best thing in the movie.
Tension (1949) was a minor but well-received MGM film noir in which Charisse played the good girl to Audrey Totter’s bad one. She received star billing along with Richard Basehart, Totter and Barry Sullivan. Charisse continued in dramatic mode with a small role in East Side, West Side (1949), a romantic-triangle drama starring Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, and Ava Gardner.
Charisse performed leading-lady duties in The Mark of the Renegade (1951), a swashbuckler costarring her frequent onscreen partner, Ricardo Montalban; and The Wild North (1952), an adventure starring Stewart Granger as a trapper in the Canadian Rockies and Wendell Corey as a stalwart Mountie.
In the history of movies, there are certain scenes that mark the moment when a relatively unheralded performer crosses the boundary into stardom. Such an event occurred for Charisse in her 21st film, Singin’ in the Rain (1952). She created an unexpected sensation in the movie’s "Broadway Melody” ballet number, playing a 1920s siren opposite the star of the film, Gene Kelly. Wearing an emerald-green flapper’s outfit and holding a long cigarette holder, she taunts Kelly by holding his straw hat on her raised foot as she offers a display of leg that seems to go on forever. Later in the number she is a vision in white, showing off her balletic skills as she trails yards of chiffon that billow in the breeze and finally envelop Kelly. Although relatively brief, these images formed a demonstration of what would become Charisse’s trademark blend of fire and ice.
Her next MGM outing was Sombrero (1953), an ensemble drama set in Mexico and also featuring Ricardo Montalban, Pier Angeli, Vittorio Gassman and Yvonne De Carlo. Charisse enjoys a striking song-and-dance sequence set on a mountaintop in the rain. She then blossomed as a genuine star playing opposite Fred Astaire in Vincente Minnelli’s supremely entertaining musical The Band Wagon (1953), playing a ballerina who must find a way to blend her classic style with Astaire’s song-and-dance-man image.
For the ensuing five years, to spectacular effect, Charisse played leading roles in major MGM musicals. She was reunited with Kelly for Brigadoon (1954), Vincente Minnelli's screen version of the Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe stage hit; and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), an original film musical directed by Kelly and Stanley Donen.
Charisse’s dancing talents were given an extensive showcase in the all-star Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). She then teamed with Astaire for a final time in Silk Stockings (1957), a screen version of the Cole Porter stage musical based on the 1939 film Ninotchka, with Charisse in the Greta Garbo role. In this case, the coolness of her acting style was an asset – although, as usual, her dancing turned up the temperature. Party Girl (1958) was the final picture under Charisse’s MGM contract. This film, costarring another departing MGM star, Robert Taylor, casts Charisse as a cabaret performer in Chicago of the early 1930s. Still in great shape at 36, she has some striking dance numbers.
In her musical films, Charisse was dubbed by such vocalists as Carol Richards, India Adams and Vikki Carr. As the musical form faded, she turned to dramatic and comedic roles – although her acting still seemed a bit distanced when compared to the excitement and immediacy of her dancing.
For Universal, she starred opposite Rock Hudson in Twilight for the Gods (1958), a South Seas adventure in which Charisse plays a beautiful prostitute. In the comedy Five Golden Hours (1961), a British/Italian production released through Columbia Pictures, she plays a “black widow” baroness involved with fortune hunters Ernie Kovacs and George Sanders. The Silencers (1966), a tongue-in-cheek secret-agent comedy starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm, features 44-year-old Charisse as an exotic dancer – allowing her to make her brief scenes count.
Her final role in a feature film came in Warlords of the Deep (1978), but Charisse continued performing on television and the stage. In 1992, she made her Broadway debut in Grand Hotel, and in 1994 was one of the onscreen narrators of That's Entertainment! III.
Charisse was married to singer/actor Tony Martin from 1948 to her death after a heart attack in 2008. The glamorous couple had sometimes worked in a nightclub act together. They also had a son, Tony Martin Jr. (1950-2011). Celebrated for her shapely legs, Charisse once remarked to Gene Kelly that she thought her tombstone should read, “People sometimes had trouble placing her face, but they never forgot her pins.”
